Psychedelic cybersecurity: How lava lamps are improving network security
Do you want to increase cybersecurity at your plant? Consider investing in lava lamps. It might sound crazy, but lava lamps have one advantage over computers; they are able to readily generate random patterns. This randomness can be processed and converted into numbers and used by a computer as a key to protect sensitive data.
According to Eric Limer for Popular Mechanics: "Content Delivery Network Cloudflare, as Tom Scott explains, instead turns to a wall of lava lamps which it uses as input into a video feed which turns the unpredictable visual data of floating blogs into a truly random number. Given that Cloudfare provides the infrastructure behind large swaths of the internet, it pays to be careful.
If that seems a little Rube Goldbergian, it is, but there's not a simple, software solution that's nearly as thorough as something like this that mixes in uncertainty from the complex physical world. At least until we develop compact quantum random number generators. Even then it might be worth hanging onto the lava lamp wall, you know, just for fun."
About the Author
Alexis GajewskiAlexis Gajewski
Senior Content Strategist
Alexis Gajewski is a manufacturing writer and editor with nearly 20 years of experience covering the people, practices, and technologies that keep industrial facilities running. For more than a decade, she served as Senior Content Strategist for Plant Services, creating content for plant managers, engineers, and maintenance professionals on a variety of industrial topics.
During her tenure, Alexis worked to develop the brand’s digital strategy and helped launch and produce Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast. She also created The Lighter Side of Manufacturing, a weekly blog that explored the inventive and sometimes humorous side of the industry.
Alexis co-founded Influential Women in Manufacturing, a recognition program that honored 49 women in its first two years, earned an industry award for Best Product Launch, and received a proclamation from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and a commendation from U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth.
She also led newsroom operations and development at a large media company where she set editorial standards, developed training curriculum, and helped support AI adoption for more than 150 editors across 80+ brands spanning manufacturing, industrial processing, automation, and more.
Additionally, Alexis works as a freelance writer and editor, and her areas of interest include continuous improvement, the skilled workforce, and the role of emerging technology on the plant floor.
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